First, Amazon's fees were higher (not sure if that's still the case). When you're selling low margin items, like I was, it was nearly not worth it. Second, the way I was grouped with similar sellers was madness. I had multiple returns because my item didn't match the picture. Well, considering Amazon used someone else's image and description on the listing, that makes sense.
eBay was many times better for selling items. I was able to use my images, customize descriptions, and ultimately pay less fees.
Low-quality goods and the increased possibility of scams.
The problem comes when you don't realize you're digging through crap looking for pearls and imagine that it's all pearls.
> Nowhere. There's no other amazon. Ebay? The flea market of the internet? That's where people who wanted to sell to wal-mart go.
If I wanted to make it sound good I'd call it a bazaar or something.
I think the above is one of the key takeaways from the collective experience of the 20-teens! In a way, it's a summary of the whole history of the Internet.
You disregard ebay but ebay actually has economic alignment with its sellers. The buyer experience isn't as good as Amazon's, but the seller experience is better in that you can control your destiny more.
But this apparently makes it a flea market?
There's going to be a tradeoff between curation and producer freedom. You can't have your cake and eat it too.